Climbing to freedom on an impossible staircase: Exploring the emancipatory potential of becoming an entrepreneur-employer

Williams, Helen C., Pritchard, Katrina, Miller, Maggie C. and Reed, Cara ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1085-1661 2021. Climbing to freedom on an impossible staircase: Exploring the emancipatory potential of becoming an entrepreneur-employer. International Small Business Journal 39 (5) , pp. 424-449. 10.1177/0266242620967613

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Abstract

This article contributes to critical discussions questioning the emancipatory potential of entrepreneurship by examining the experiences of men and women entrepreneurs who have recently become employers in South Wales, the United Kingdom. Our research uses a co-creative visual method based in interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore transitions from entrepreneur to entrepreneur-employer in everyday contexts. Findings demonstrate how initial emancipatory experiences become increasingly bounded when becoming an entrepreneur-employer. This exposes a Catch-22 of entrepreneuring-as-emancipation as a symptom of neoliberal entrepreneurial discourses that constrain what entrepreneurs are encouraged to do: grow. We find a plurality of particular emancipations, but conclude that within a developed context entrepreneurship, and more specifically, becoming an entrepreneur-employer is a relational step through which perceived constraints become more readily experienced and emancipation never fully realised.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Publisher:	SAGE
ISSN:	0266-2426
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	21 October 2020
Date of Acceptance:	29 September 2020
Last Modified:	24 Nov 2024 17:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/135838

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